Erich Gniffke

Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Communism Non-Bolshevik socialists 1895–1964 ○ Heart attack

SPD organiser in the Soviet zone who signed the merger with the KPD, then left the SED in 1948 and fled west

The son of a shipyard worker in Elbing, he joined the SPD in 1913 and became a white-collar union official in Brunswick, where he worked closely with Otto Grotewohl. Under the Nazis he belonged to a Social Democratic resistance circle and was imprisoned with Grotewohl in 1938. In May 1945 he and Grotewohl rebuilt the SPD in Berlin; he sat on its Central Committee and was the first SPD signatory of the agreement with the KPD and of the unity declaration. Elected to the SED Central Secretariat in 1946, he was isolated as the party was Stalinised and in September 1948 was relieved of all functions. In October he wrote a letter of resignation warning that the “party of a new type” would lead to a totalitarian dictatorship, and fled to the West. He died in 1964.